Hello.
This is a complicated question. Researchers have found that there is
significant "intergenerational income correlation" in America (i.e.,
parental income plays a role in determining children's income).
Research cited below indicates that overall "intergenerational income
correlation" in the United States is 0.4 (note that 1.0 is perfect
correlation while 0.0 is no correlation).
And, in turn, this intergenerational income correlation reduces
overall social mobility. However, the strength of this correlation
varies across society, with the greatest immobility existing at the
highest and lowest levels. In other words, if your parents had a high
income, you tend to have higher income. If your parents had low
income, you tend to have lower income. However, if your parents were
middle-income, the "intergenerational income correlation" is minimal
(i.e., it's harder to predict whether you'll earn a high income, a low
income or a middle income).
Also, significant gender differences exist. Researchers have found
that "intergenerational income correlation" is stronger between
fathers and sons than between fathers and daughters.
I've located a number of excellent articles that thoroughly discuss
the issues raised by your question.
See:
"Intergenerational Mobility in the United States"
Daniel P. McMurrer, Mark Condon, Isabel V. Sawhill, Urban Institute
http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=406796
Here is an excerpt from the article:
" Solon (1989, 1992).. finds that the intergenerational income
correlation in the United States is quite significant ? approximately
0.4, indicating that approximately 16 percent of overall variation in
sons' incomes may be attributed to fathers' incomes. The correlation
between total family income in the earlier period and sons' income in
1984 was 0.5, even higher than the correlation between the individual
incomes of fathers and sons.
The effects of such a correlation on individual opportunity are
significant. Assuming a normal distribution of long-term income, the
correlation of 0.4 would imply that a son whose father's income was at
the 25th percentile would have a 26 percent chance of being in the
bottom quintile, a 39 percent chance of rising above the median, and a
12 percent chance of moving up to the highest income quintile. A son
whose father's income was at the 95th percentile would have a 5
percent chance of being in the bottom quintile, a 76 percent chance of
being above the median, and a 42 percent chance of being in the top
quintile. Thus, Solon's findings indicate that there remains a
substantial component of income immobility in the United States."
source:
"Intergenerational Mobility in the United States"
http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=406796
Here are two more good articles on this subject from the same web site:
"The Declining Importance of Class"
http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=307017
"Economic Mobility in the United States"
http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=406722
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The U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics also has an
excellent paper on this subject:
"Differences in Intergenerational Mobility across the Earnings Distribution"
http://www.bls.gov/ore/pdf/ec030010.pdf
(This document is in PDF format, so the Adobe Acrobat Reader is
required. If you don't have that, visit:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html )
Here is an excerpt:
"With perfect mobility, the segment the child ends up in should be
independent of the segment the parent was in. For example, if the
distributions are divided up into quartiles, then a child born to a
father in the bottom quartile will have 25% chance of ending up in
each quartile of his/her generation?s distribution under perfect
mobility.
The main conclusion from the transition matrix analyses was that more
immobility exists at either end of the earnings distribution than in
the middle. Using the United States' National Longitudinal Survey,
Zimmerman (1992) showed that sons born to fathers in the bottom
quartile had a 40% chance of staying in the bottom quartile and only a
12% chance of rising to the top quartile. In the middle quartiles, the
probabilities were closer to the 25% one would expect under perfect
mobility. Moreover, sons at the bottom of the earnings distribution
only have a 31% chance of moving to the top half. Peters (1992) uses
the NLS but also examines father-daughter pairs. For sons, her
results are similar to Zimmerman's. Daughters appear to have greater
earnings mobility: for every quartile of father's earnings, daughters
have close to a 25% chance of ending up in each quartile of their
distribution."
"Differences in Intergenerational Mobility across the Earnings Distribution"
http://www.bls.gov/ore/pdf/ec030010.pdf
----------
Further reading:
"Earnings Mobility in the US: A New Look at Intergenerational Inequality"
http://www.santafe.edu/files/gems/intergenerational/mazumder10-11-01.pdf
(The document is in PDF format, so the Adobe Acrobat Reader is
required. If you don't have that, visit:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html )
"Waking Up From The American Dream:
Dead-end jobs and the high cost of college could be choking off upward mobility"
source: BusinesWeek
http://yahoo.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_48/b3860067_mz021.htm
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search terms:
mobility, "than their parents"
intergenerational mobility, income, parents
I hope this helps. I believe that the articles cited address the
complex issues raised by your question. If anything is unclear, please
let me know via the "request clarification" feature. Thanks. |
